


A Bluer Ocean (Against Tomorrow's Sky)

by F_ontiptoes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, I have feelings, No plot at all, lots of fluff, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 13:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8626108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F_ontiptoes/pseuds/F_ontiptoes
Summary: Maybe this is as good as it gets. (Maybe it can't get any better.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> What's my excuse? Season 7's making me sad so I wrote 1.5k words of pure Glenn/Maggie fluff. I tried. I hope this is coherent and makes sense to someone who doesn't live in my head. I'm not sure it will. I'm very sorry if there's any glaring mistakes in this. I checked it three times, but English isn't my first language so there's probably some mistakes that escaped me. Anyhow, I hope you'll enjoy this!

This is how civilization went down: With both a bang and a whimper. And with a whole lot of blood. 

It’s a cruel fate, Maggie thinks, being alive in a world that does its worst to kill you, but she’s come this far and she’s determined to continue. Maybe Alexandria isn’t a terribly bad place. There are walls and water and a gate and it feels safe, but Rick doesn’t trust people so they won’t (yet). Maybe they’re relying a bit too much on Rick’s instincts, but then again when has he ever been wrong? And in the end this world has proofed itself to be nothing but brutal and violent and better safe than sorry.

The room breathes and sighs around her, mostly because there isn’t particularly much space and there are roughly a dozen of them. Carl bounces Judith on his hip as he paces between the crib and the sink and Rick watches with something soft and tired in his eyes. Tara mumbles in her sleep, frowning deeply as Maggie takes care not to jostle her as she steps over her crossed ankles. She kneels down next to where Glenn’s sleeping on a faded wool blanket and he turns towards her on instinct, fingers reaching out to tangle in her sleeve. She smiles and tilts her head, reaching out to touch his brow. 

“Hi.” She whispers quietly and the moonlight dips everything into dusty, silver light. It all feels a bit like a dream. She’s here and it’s safe and Glenn found her in a subway tunnel in the middle of the nowhere. (He’ll claim it’s been the other way around) Days like these make her believe that maybe somehow, sometime there’ll be a day when everything will be almost alright, when she and Glenn can be happy in a place like this and live a life that makes her feel like this.   
“Hey.” He whispers back, heavy with sleep and tugs on her wrist until she lies down beside him, her head on his shoulder and his hand curling around the nape of her neck. She folds her hands over his heart.   
“This is a good thing.” She says quietly and she’s not sure if she’s talking to him or herself. “A good place.”   
She feels him nod and he turns his head to press his nose to her temple.   
//

Glenn’s cutting up an apple at the kitchen table and Maggie sits in the chair opposite of him as she tries to remember the last time she had an apple. The used to grow all kinds of fruit on the farm: apples and pears and peaches and fat, dark plums. Maggie watches Glenn work and he looks happy and relaxed, at ease. She wonders if she does too. He carves the core out with the tip of the knife and then slices the two halves into even quarters. 

“There you go.” He says as he offers one up to her, smiling in a way only he can. There’s few things left in this world that make her heart twitch like Glenn does. In fact she struggles to remember one. She smiles her thanks as she takes the fruit from him, fingers brushing along his. The apple is crisp and tart as she bites into it and she hums a little in contentment.   
“I know, right?” he says on a laugh and it makes him look boyish, young. “Who would’ve thought an apple would ever make anyone this happy?”  
Maggie sighs and a little and crosses her legs under the table, her toes bumping into his calve. “My mother used to make the best apple pie.” She says quietly and glances down at the table top. “Crunchy, buttery crust and the sweetest filling you could imagine.”  
“Hey…” Glenn says, smiling lopsidedly and ducks his head to catch her eyes. “Maybe we can make some here too.”  
She laughs out loud. “You know how to make apple pie?”  
He makes a point to attempt to look hurt, but his eyes crinkle and the corners of his mouth start to tug up before he even begins to talk. “What’s so funny about that?”  
“Nothing, nothing.” She says, reaching out to drum her fingers against the back of his hand. He turns his hand palm up and catches her fingers with his. “You just never struck me as the baking type, is all.”   
“Well…” He says, clicking his tongue a little. “I guess you never know until you try, right?”

//

“Do you think we’ll be happy here?”  
“I think I could be happy anywhere as long as you’re there too.”

//

The stars still look the same and it’s both a relief and an offence. The world changed so drastically that she feels like everything else should’ve changed with it. She tries to remember any of the constellations her father used to try teach her when she was young, but her main interest back then had been the small white pony she’d gotten for her tenth birthday. The pony’s name had been Tulip but she can’t recall a single constellation. This strikes her as terribly sad. She turns over onto her side and pushes the feeling down, swallows around the lump in her throat. 

“Do you know anything about astrology?” Maggie asks as she props herself up on her elbow.   
“I know a lot about Star Wars.” Glenn offers, smilling sheepishly and Maggie shrugs as she lies back down.   
“I guess that must count for something.” She sighs and she’s tired but it’s a different kind of fatigue than what she knows from the road or even the prison. It’s one that preludes a long, starry night spent sunken deep into a too soft mattress with Glenn’s arm thrown loosely across her waist and his breath brushing by her ear. There’s no adrenaline rushing through her veins and her heart beats a little slower these days. Rick thinks that’s what makes this place this dangerous. She desperately needs him to be wrong. 

“Do you think it’s making us soft?” She asks aloud, suddenly scared that all of this is too good to be true. “This place, I mean.”  
Glenn shrugs, still looking up at the sky and takes a moment to think before he answers. “I think it might. Somehow, eventually.”  
He’s honest and it does nothing to ease her nerves, instead it just makes her nerves spike, a hot, anxious weight spreading in her chest. She breaths out and it rattles a bit in her throat.   
“I don’t see anything wrong with being soft, though.” He adds after a while and it means If you can afford to and that’s enough, because it’s for her and her heart breaks and beats for him, every day anew.   
(She doesn’t say thank you, but he still hears it.)

//

Maggie wakes with a start and a strange sense of displacement tingling in her limbs. She’s lying in a bed, pillows and sheets soft and cool against her skin and somehow that’s the strangest thing. The blinds are drawn and the early morning light filters in hazily with specs of dust dancing between the rays. She rolls over and gropes around the nightstand until her fingers hit the small clock sitting in the centre. It’s not as late yet as she had thought and she has to squint in order to make out the numbers.

“’time is it?” Glenn slurs, voice laced with sleep. He’s propped up on his elbow, peering at her through bleary eyes. He looks exhausted and not at all awake yet and she loves him so much, her heart feels like it might burst right there and then.   
“Not seven yet.” She whispers quietly and he groans.   
“Too early.” He decides and flops down on top of her face first, nose pressing into her collarbone. His hand slips up her wrist until he can take the clock from her to sit it back down soundly. He sighs, eyes fluttering closed against her skin. “Much better.”  
She smiles fondly to herself and starts combing her fingers through his hair. He hums softly to himself and it makes her feel whole and fuzzy around the edges at the same time.   
“I love you.” Maggie says into this safe empty bedroom with the soft pillows and the hazy light and her brave, loving husband and her heart that feels like it wants to climb out of her chest just to be closer to him.   
“Love you too.” Glenn mumbles back, and his lips move against the skin just above her heart. “Now go back to sleep.”

She laughs and she doesn’t know why. Maybe this is as good as it gets.  
(Maybe it can’t get any better.)

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from "Sweet Thing", which is originally by Van Morrison, but there's a very lovely Hozier cover out there, which I had on repeat while writing this.


End file.
